#and the devs understand that and are working with us on it

[askagamedev]

Hello. Do you think having a game programming YouTube channel can be useful as a portfolio? Like recreating game mechanics from existing games or creating new ones, and explaining my thoughts and decisions through the videos. Similar to Artstation for artists, but in this case for programming.

I do like the idea of having an online portfolio where a candidate can showcase their skills, but I am not sure that a youtube channel is the ideal platform for it. I can see good gains to be had from doing so, but there are also non-trivial drawbacks. I'll explain what I mean.

First, doing personal game development projects earns top marks. There's no better way to stand out as a candidate than to have experience doing that work already and game development is no exception. Show us that you can do the job by doing similar work. Earning experience as an amateur will translate to leveling up as a professional.

Second, there's definitely a lot of benefit to practicing communication skills which you get from posting for public consumption. My own personal ability to communicate has improved significantly since I began this blog. The regular practice of posting to the blog has honed my skill at taking difficult, technical, and/or complex concepts and conveying them in an intuitive and understandable way. These are extremely helpful skills in a professional setting, especially when communicating with others who are not versed in the technical or design context.

There are also two drawbacks I see here.

The first drawback is in the choice of platform. Video production is extremely time-consuming - at the very least you will need to record the needed footage, write and record the commentary, add any needed visual bits (e.g. intro, outro, key art, transitions, etc.) and (most time-consuming of all) edit each video together. Most of these skills are not directly transferable to game development and are the primary reason I decided against going the Youtube route for myself.

The second drawback is in the public-facing nature of posting your work. If you get hired by a game company, you will become a corporate representative to the players of that company's games 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Your personal public posts will likely be read and dissected by the game's fans and used as potential ammunition against your employer. It is not abnormal for public blogs and the like to need shutting down (either temporarily or permanently) once you get hired. It may become a legal liability and that's not something you want to deal with while juggling a full-time job. I avoid this by staying anonymous but it's a double-edged sword - I must also forgo the benefit of having a public portfolio that I can show to potential employers.

That's basically the rundown. There's a lot to be gained from doing personal game dev work and posting it publicly, but you don't need to go all or nothing. There are really good skills you will develop by doing so, but you should absolutely be mindful of the major drawbacks of doing so in a public venue. I would encourage you to consider these issues and find a solution that you think will work best for you.

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#portfolio #getting a job in the game industry #public facing #leveling up

[rohirric-hunter]

Me, on the LotRO Forums: Hey @ devs I really appreciate the way you implemented this feature. It really improves the game and here's why I think that.

Some Loser: NO IT DOESN'T!!!!!!! IT SUCKS AND I HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#literally barely even upset #just kind of feel sorry for them #they are also very silly #they seem to think that the point of the reward track is like? upgrading your li? silly #its obviously for cosmetics and upgrading your li is a cool side benefit #this is not a joke i 100% believe this #i believe that the vast majority of lotros playerbase does not give a shit about lis #and will only work on them if the materials to do so are literally handed to them #that certainly describes me anyway #so in order to make the li system function at all they have to dangle shiny cosmetics in front of players and then also give them li mats #this sounds like im insulting people but im not #it just isnt a priority #and the devs understand that and are working with us on it #its just that the people who only care about that are loud and whiny and on the forums #but idk. we cant let them have the run of the forums #weve got to have a presence there too #which is why im putting on my big girl britches and actually posting over there these days

[thefirstknife]

First, I wanna say that I do NOT condone the extenely nasty and toxic behavior of various parts of the fandom, especially towards the devs. But I'm starting to wonder more and more if this is actually something the company brought on themselves? The game at this point relies on an increasingly expensive and predatory FOMO model and a lot of players seem to exhibit symptoms of genuine addiction to the game, or at least a very unhealthy relationship cultivated by that FOMO and "well I sunk all this money in I can't just stop now" mindsets. Which leads to players burning out and being irrational, which leads to some players being ruder or cruel and gives toxic players (who would be toxic anyway) a community that doesn't reject them out of hand because the community itself is so exhausted and frustrated and genuinely struggling to have a healthy connection to the game due to the entire model it operates under. It doesn't mean the devs or other players deserve the cruelty they've faced, but it feels like this behavior breeding among the fans is the natural consequence of the direction the game has gone. (I notice this in various mobile gacha type games that are heavily FOMO and predatory, too--the addition and sunk cost issues seem to make it truly difficult for people to be able to behave rationally)

In a way, I guess? It's not really the devs making these decisions though, it's the executives and marketing which pretty much has nothing to do with the game itself. It's still Bungie, but this stuff goes beyond just Bungie and just Destiny and just game development.

Basically, what people are mad about is capitalism. But since it's much harder to fight a whole system we live under and the system under which games are being made, people instead turn to individual companies and then also on devs, mostly because devs are the ones who are visible online. A marketing CEO from Bungie who signs off on these decisions isn't on Twitter.

I definitely wouldn't say that any company "brought individual employee harassment" on themselves. Like, no matter what state the game is in, you should never go for the random devs online and people should know that, no matter how mad they get. They're definitely not making these decisions and a lot of them are actively against them. For example, this is from a senior narrative designer at Bungie:

Note that the first thing he mentioned is "monetization and business interests overshadowing artistry." This isn't isolated, it's just one person who wanted to share, but it's a general sentiment among the actual devs. Nobody wants their work to be subjected to the aggressive monetisation schemes that ultimately piss off the consumers and ruin the product itself.

But as I said, the issue here goes above and beyond just one game or one dev studio. A lot of people keep talking about awful monetisation in Destiny, but I genuinely can't agree that Destiny, of all games, is the worst game monetisatio-wise. I'm actively involved in games that are worse and especially games that became worse, the best example of which is Overwatch. I don't think Destiny gamers could even comprehend how awful Overwatch became monetisation-wise. And that doesn't even begin to dive into other horrible practices in the gaming industry.

The point isn't to say that just because there's worse than Destiny, that Destiny is fine. It's definitely not and some things have certainly changed for the worse, though there were also horrible practices in Destiny before that were since removed. There used to be loot boxes. Like, actual gambling loot boxes. I would honestly just buy the ornaments directly rather than being tempted to buy 50 loot boxes and gamble. The only good part was that dismantling items from loot boxes could give you bright dust, but that makes sense for loot boxes that you had to buy with silver. So technically you bought that dust with silver. You could get them also for levelling so there's that, but that was really the only way to earn anything. Grind insane hours and hope for the best or take the easy way out: buying boxes for money. I cannot stress enough how much gambling is the worst predatory practice in existence in the gaming industry. Nothing else will ever be as detrimental and scummy as encouraging gambling. People don't really remember this or even know, but the switch to direct purchase is actually better.

However, of course, the increase in the amount of things that are silver-only is definitely felt. One of the worst parts is shaders for me. Shaders got no business being for silver and in bundles where you technically have to spend $10 for a shader. Event cards are also a sore spot; they're literally just Eververse bundles, but with extra steps that tie them to an event so you feel like you're earning stuff in gameplay. They come together with random currency (tickets) that stays unused unless you buy the card. It's 100% made to make people want to pay.

But sometimes the criticism on monetisation is also really superficial and from people who don't understand game development. One of the examples that people often use is dungeon key. Now, personally, I think that dungeon key should be separate for each dungeon instead of forcing you to buy 2 dungeons at once for $15. You should be able to buy just one. Like, come on. However, the idea that we have to pay for dungeons is not a predatory practice. It's content that has to be made and requires resources and dev hours (regardless of what people think of the dungeons). People will usually say "dungeons used to be available with seasons!" This is a lie.

Before WQ, we had 4 dungeons released since vanilla D2. Shattered Throne was the first and it was a part of the expansion. Pit of Heresy was second and it was a part of the expansion. Prophecy was a part of Season of Arrivals (!). And Grasp of Avarice was 30th Anniversary, a separate pack that had to be bought separately. Out of all dungeons available so far, only one was a part of the season and I genuinely don't even know how they managed that and I feel like some devs probably laboured over Prophecy essentially for free. So the idea that "dungeons were just for free in seasons" is just a lie. Only one was, an exception that possibly negatively impacted developers. If we want 2 dungeons per year, we will have to pay for them. And we do. It's either that, or maybe they can include one dungeon in the expansion and that's it. I wouldn't mind that, but the same people shitting on devs are also the people who shit on devs over "content droughts" and "not enough content" so I don't think that would satisfy them.

The point is that while some of the criticism is absolutely warranted, a lot of complete misunderstandings and lies often get mixed up with it and this all results in the situation we're in now where the only thing that the community is doing online is being negative and spiralling into dev harassment. And they end up feeling justified because the company is engaging in predatory practices. It's very easy to get into that mindset and to feel like you're not just allowed to harass, but encouraged.

The biggest issue with monetisation is always people who spend a lot of money aka whales. And by a lot, I mean a lot. Like there are people who buy every single thing in the store (and this is applied to all games). An average player buying a shader once in 3 months is not a problem. The whales are what shows up on marketing reports and what makes soulless capitalist ghouls add more of this shit to games. Which makes it even worse that the people who are perpetuating this hate train against monetisation riddled with incomplete misleading information and lies ARE WHALES. Aztecross who made the big video is a whale. Last time people checked his stream, he literally had 8000 silver in his account and people who watch his streams have said that he frequently has segments with his chat where they look at the store and he buys stuff, ON STREAM, while also asking his chat which items he should get. He's a hypocrite who is doing this to earn more money and is, to me, not any different from the soulless capitalist ghouls that work in gaming industry marketing departments.

The best thing he can do, if he cared about this topic, is to stop playing and stop making content about Destiny. Like, that's genuinely it. If he and other content creators like him are so serious about this topic and believe that the monetisation is such a serious problem in Destiny, they should stop spending money, stop playing, stop marketing the game and stop making content for it. There is no other way for Bungie to get the message, certainly not by going at random devs. And then after that, the next best step would be to involve yourself in political action to bring stricter laws to the whole gaming industry when it comes to predatory and anti-consumer practices.

In the meantime, serious talk: if any video game ever made you feel like you have to spend money, especially money you don't have, and you spent that money against your better judgement, please reach out to someone. It's not shameful and you're not alone. Games are a hobby and entertainment and should never put you in financial risk or ruin. If any video game is too much for you and you can no longer pay for it, but you feel like you have to keep playing and it's risking you financially, again, please reach out to someone. There are people who can help you deal with these feelings, especially if you know you can become addictive. The gaming industry as a whole preys on people's need for entertainment and dopamine rush and if you can't resist it on your own (which is, again, not a shameful thing), there's options to get help. This is mostly about the extra stuff like microtransactions, but it also works for just base game stuff. A year of Destiny content is cheaper than a year of some other games, but it doesn't mean that it's something everyone can afford. You can absolutely skip seasons or even expansions. You can also wait for them to be on sale and I always recommend looking out for sales anyway. There's genuinely very little value in being constantly pushed by FOMO and there IS a way to get out of the FOMO mentality. You can work on that, especially with people who can offer professional help if you need it.

Never let the capitalist scum control you.

#destiny 2 #bungie #long post #ask #it's gonna take a lot more than just being mad at a video game to change the system #unfortunately #also unfortunately when we go at devs that doesn't really touch the people who actually make these decisions #and might even be worse for the devs who have to work in these conditions. being harassed by players and pushed by bosses #i definitely understand the frustration though. i know a lot of people get pushed into this by frustration #the capitalist hell we live in hurts everyone but the ones on top and fighting among each other benefits them #we should stand with devs and encourage them to tell us what we can do as players to fight against this #honestly i want game devs to go on strike so bad. game industry strike NOW!!!!!!

[regicidal-defenestration]

re:curse is a fun little game it's like "'my creation has trapped me in the torture labyrinth!' cries the scientist whose research involved putting code she was only partly sure wasn't sentient into torture labyrinths."

#that being said as someone working on a neural network i very much understand linda's 'yeah im using this code no im not entirely sure how #it works' #also the dev talked about caroline having a sans undertale type vibe and yknow what they pulled it off marvelously #re:curse

[knackeredforever]

Guess who bought the steam version of rpg maker MV after trying the free trial version finally plays it and encounters several game breaking bugs by running autorun events causing the player to be unable to move after the event finishes even if I add a switch to stop the event and making the game unplayable thanks rpgmaker MV.

What the fuck.

#rpgmaker #rpg maker #rpgmaker mv #the trial version worked perfectly but the payed version doesn’t work properly what the fuck #I can’t find anyone else who has a similar problem to me why is this happening #anyone who uses rpgmaker MV on steam could you please help me try to understand what the fuck is wrong with my version of the game #I’ve already asked this on another forum I’m mainly posting this just to vent #game dev #gamedev

[snow-and-saltea]

yesterday i spent 45 minutes of my life watching a video essay criticising the use of cheap shock values and crossing of taboos for a video game and i went from "he has a point even if he's explaining it in a really inflammatory way" to "oh umm... i can see how he thinks that way even if i don't agree" to "oh this guy's just straight up using people on tumblr as material for an audience to get mad at like other outdated people on the internet. nvm he's just an asshole"

#yuu rambles #it was about the coffin of andey and leyley btw - i agreed w him on the first half of the video about how it felt rather noncommittal to it #concepts and themes but i recognise its not really *trying* to be serious which means its not a reasonable #framework to judge the intention and execution of its work - an apple pie does use butter in it but just bc it does #doesnt mean you get to compare it to steak; a dish that also uses butter. this is intuitively easy to understand for me #but nonetheless it was like 3 am i had stuff to do so i just put it on my background to listen #he makes a diss at “people on tumblr” early on that i just raised my eyebrow at but shrugged it off bc its such an old joke #its lost its zinger; and im p sure its just confirmation bias from going into the tags of the thing you dont like lol if you use tumblr #normally you wouldn't come across things you dont like bc you'd have blocked them. But Anyways #then at the end he got sooo self righteous about how people on tumblr are insane and weird and showed screencaps about how twisted everyone #who likes the game are. there were some screenshots of people's post that were like “incest is bad and shouldn't be explored in media. #paragraph break‚ me who is an incest survivor and finds it helpful for working through my trauma: lol” #those types of post. but then lmfao he started going out of pocket and just mentioned the lists of other people he doesnt like which are #a screenie of a video essay about how kink is important at pride #and then some other stuff i dont remember anymore w the tumblr screenies #it was very mockingly written and said and at the end of it i felt sad i couldnt #block people on youtube lmao. like its not i dont want this guy to comment on my videos. i dont want to see his channel involuntarily #recommended to me ever again. just resorted to the most base sort of trolling behaviour he accused and judge other game devs for in his #video essay. good fucking god. the psychological projection is unreal #i dont have any strong feelings towards the game at the end of it even though i thought i would be like Eugh at first #but my bleh for any cheap gimmicks is overshadowed by my disdain for this guy's reliance on self righteous rhetoric #i discovered another new channel i really like tho after that vid!! bc i had to watch smth else to cleanse my palate lmao #they're jacob geller and freddydude! ive only seen one vid from freddydude about his essay on #detention‚ the horror game set in taiwan during the era of white terror under new cn leadership after ww2 #im personally quite jumpy so his humour and the way he edits his videos to make it silly even though its Scary #made me like it a lot!! im going through jacob geller's other vids but ive watched three specific types of terror #and the one about pinocchio which made me go :00 wow his scripts are super good! #again everything at your own discretion esp w the whole james somerton shit‚ but i enjoyed what I've seen so far #i just wanted to end this in a somewhat positive note JSHDKSJDJD the ramblings Continue... #theres a pedantic error in one of ky tags but im gonna update it when im on comp bc mobile sucks smh my head

[reformedmercymain]

ow2 PvE NEEDS to majorly knock it out of the park to bring back a large casual audience to overwatch. Many casual players that have stuck around seem to hate the existence of role queue and are potentially unaware that there’s a gamemode called “quickplay classic” and that there is a classic form of comp too which is surprising to me. But still. I have a shit ton of hope for them doing well because this glimpse into PvP direction for ow2 is just SO good that I think the game can thrive if they get enough time on the PvE aspects.

#I say it’s so good because it’s legitimately extremely fun! it may not look very different to many players #but good god it is answering all of my problems with the game and is so damn FUN that I’m hopeful #I genuinely have a lot of thoughts on this but I’m like. #sad that casual players simply don’t understand how much better the beta is even with the changes that seem very minor to them #I’ll probably make an actually long post abt it eventually but today I’m way too tired to share my thoughts about the importance of the #casual audience #the issue is finding the middle ground of #game MUST be balanced top down bc it’s competitive + fun for casual players so that it can continue to exist #but god I feel bad for devs. if you remember some of the walkouts discussing working conditions #suits coming in demanding things giving a shitty deadline them pulling it off and then they come back to say scrap it and do something else #like. I just hope they have major progress in the PvE. #I think they need to add a bunch of playable characters that like.. even if they aren’t immediately available in qp/comp #are able to be used in the story mode or custom games #because like… there’s not a ton of ways to get casual players in if it doesn’t feel like a new game #bc again suits wanted a sequel but devs knew it’d be an expansion #which means it’s nearly impossible to meet both expectations of fans and company higher ups #anyways my tags r long. this is a brief overview of the shit I will probably talk about tho #c talks

[mantisgodsdomain]

i just wanna say that you're 100% right about Vi, i also wish people wouldn't just toss her aside like that, she's just as important to the team. like, she has depth dang it! she's more than just Funny Bee Who Likes Berries! also you're super right about people trying to squish Team Snakemouth into little nuclear family shaped holes. that's all, just wanted to give you a high five for complaining about stuff that also annoyed me

We've been chattering about it for... more than a year now, we think? Not necessarily via public venues, since this fandom's close-knit enough that stepping on toes is a major issue, but Team Snakemouth is a TRIO, not a duo, and trying to squish the relationship down to just "two dads and their baby kid" really just seems... reductive. Exhausting.

Vi's one of our favourite characters in the game, and it gets really tiring to see her treated as a third wheel. Even beyond the infantilization that's utterly rampant in this fandom, Vi, more than everyone else, gets things... sanded off, or just ignored. Either she's a bratty little kid who doesn't know better, or she's a background object, and that's just... taking a big chunk out of the team dynamic. She's got complexity! She's part of the team, not some random kid that Kabbu and Leif are dragging along on their adventures! She's a valuable part of the team, and she should be treated as such!

#full disclosure saying anything abt vi is like. the only thing thats gotten us hate here bc some people in here are weird abt it #we do think that a lot of the fandom issues here also track back to the refusal to acknowledge the incredible dysfunction of the hive #like. vi's Fucked Up and just because no one's dead doesn't mean that her trauma is any less valid #everything that caused her misery is still alive and kicking and she has to make nice with it as part of her job! #her ENTIRE first interaction with jaune reads as textbook emotional abuse! like. we could read symptoms off from a textbook for it #vi is in that specific Young Adult stage where shes striking off on her own and running up against the wall of not knowing how to do shit #and in that specific state where she was never taught to do her own shit because she was never expected to strike off outside of the family #shes reverse engineering being a functional person from peanuts and a handful of leftover abuse! of COURSE shes a bit fucked! #she ran away from home and sheltered with a bunch of criminals and shes incredibly written as an abuse survivor but it still seems to be #unintentional #shes a neat character. we still think abt the fact that the devs discounted her as “not having actual problems”. #we can elaborate on all of these points btw #at all times we are like 5 seconds away from pulling out several different articles on emotional and familial abuse and going full like #“do you understand? do you see the problem? do you understand whats happening here?” #we still think abt the fact that vi was working shifts at the honey factory before running away #we think abt the fact that that canonically involves things like days-long shifts. we think abt “theyre used to being there a while” #we think abt how jaune uses “child” as a blunt force weapon to discredit vi's thoughts and feelings as not really mattering #and how vi reacts to being called a kid in light of it #and how bianca leaps to claim her as Her Child once vi's accomplished something decent despite vi being visibly uncomfortable #we think about how a queen can claim any worker as Her Daughters but most workers cant call their queen their mother #we think about it a lot #...anyways this has derailed into vi trauma talk but uhh. yeah the current fandom attitude annoys us to hell and back #she isnt just Some Kid and tbh calling her a kid in general rubs us the wrong way if only because of how much baggage she has attached #obviously shes not gonna be normal or well-adjusted. have u SEEN her household? she ran away to an illegal bar over her house #but it could really help if people could treat her like a person rather than just a child accessory to her teammates adventures #she earned that damn self-sufficiency and by fuck we are gonna get some decent stuff out there even if we have to claw it from our own mind #bug fables #we speak #asks

[foxstens]

i really hate when 2d games literally tell you a controller is recommended

#my posts #gameblogging #first of all: don't tell me what to do #second of all if your game is a side scroller or doesn't have a camera #or doesn't require any directional input #whyyyyyyy would a controller be better #AND WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME WHAT TO USE FOR A GAME ON /PC/ #and from the outset it feels like you're going to have a worse experience #just because you don't use what the devs recommended #its just feels like such an unnecessary thing to me #hk dead cells and afterimage all have this #and i dont understand why #honestly almost all of the games i've played play fine or even better on keyboard #outside of very specific situations in ac #but even that works okay the vast majority of the time #and games like hk dead cells blasphemous ori i might say are even /better/ on keyboard #even freaking slime rancher works great #i just dont get it #ive even heard players say stuff like 'who wants to play a 2d platformer on keyboard' #:///////// #eh whatever

[six-of-ravens]

I would really like a single office day where I don't come home and play an evening-long game of Am I The Asshole?

#i probably am #coworker got mad at me today bc she used chatg/pt to write a list of revisions for me #and what it wrote was both incredibly condescending (chat/gpt feels the need to explain the basic rules of design like you're an infant) #and way longer than it should've been (we ask everyone to keep their posts short and sweet so that we don't have to read a whole paragraph #to figure out what the hell they want us to do) #so anyway i just told her 'pls just write out the tasks we don't need a whole chatg/pt essay for this' #and that made her mad bc she 'wrote everything up so nicely!' (no you didn't bitch) #so anyway we're caught in a loop of both thinking the other is a fucking asshole who's being a dick for no reason #also i sent her 2 screenshots just to explain that I'd thought 2 things were different sizes and she went ballistic #anyway... it's annoying bc i think she's our best designer but also. very much starting to not like her as a person #maybe i complimented her work too much. the other week she wrote out changes BY HAND that were perfectly clear and good #and i told her as much in the meeting #so....i guess this time she decided to use chatgpt? to be massively condescending bc CLEARLY i didn't just type thr wrong number somewhere #nooooooo CLEARLY i just don't understand web design at all! #also she got in a snit about 'of course X is Y pixels tall! we do all those meetings where we discuss the grid size!!' #which like....i am in those meetings and they are just the one dev trying to convince the designers to use the grid #and them coming up with a million reasons not to #sooooooo fuck me i guess for not expecting you to use the grid when all you do is piss yourselves about how were stifling your creativity #ANYWAY. so yeah maybe i am the asshole but in my defence don't use a fkn ai to write something that should take like 5 mins to write

[queriesntheories]

REBLOGS ARE OFF CAUSE THIS GUIDE IS TERRIBLE AND YOU DESERVE BETTER

I will instead redirect you to THIS more comprehensive guide, and cobalt.tools. Cobalt solves the problem of low quality video when you're done with VLC, and it can also take videos from a dozen other social media platforms.

Support the cobalt dev and the better guide writer, not me. I'm just a person who boiled down a wikihow guide and a youtube tutorial into a TLDR. I did not do very much work. They have.

I might turn reblogs back on, but for now I implore you to put your attention where it's needed most. Thanks for understanding. (original post under the cut)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

alright i am sick of yt to mp4 sites being shady and full of viruses and finding websites that seem to be working and then don't work

so HERE'S HOW YOU DOWNLOAD YOUTUBE VIDEOS WITH VLC!! VLC FREAKIN RULES!!

get your youtube link

open vlc, go to media > open network stream

paste your url in the box and PRESS PLAY!

wait for the video to open then go to tools > codec information

copy the entire file location (click the box, then ctrl-a to select all, then ctrl-c to copy)

paste into your browser of choice (i use firefox)

right click video and press "save video as", choose your file format if you want

DONE! NO VIRUSES OR SKETCHY STUFF!

the quality might be a little crummy but if you don't mind that, then shabam! video on your computer! then you can email it to yourself and have it on your phone too if you want! if you need a guide with pictures wikihow has you covered my friends

happy downloading and stay safe on the internet :D

#youtube #q's internet trinkets #tips #useful #vlc media player

[insertdisc5]

🎮 HEY I WANNA MAKE A GAME! 🎮

Yeah I getcha. I was once like you. Pure and naive. Great news. I AM STILL PURE AND NAIVE, GAME DEV IS FUN! But where to start?

To start, here are a couple of entry level softwares you can use! source: I just made a game called In Stars and Time and people are asking me how to start making vidy gaems. Now, without further ado:

SOFTWARES AND ENGINES FOR PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO CODE!!!

Ren'py (and also a link to it if you click here do it): THE visual novel software. Comic artists, look no further ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It has great documentation! It has a bunch of plugins and UI stuff and assets for you to buy! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) You can also port your game to a BUNCH of consoles! ✨Cons: None really <3 Some games to look at: Doki Doki Literature Club, Bad End Theater, Butterfly Soup

Twine: Great for text-based games! GREAT FOR WRITERS WHO DONT WANNA DRAW!!!!!!!!! (but you can draw if you want) ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's versatile! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! (You'll just need to read the doc a bunch) ✨Cons: You can add pictures, but it's a pain. Some games to look at: The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo, Queers In love At The End of The World, Escape Velocity

Bitsy: Little topdown games! ✨Pros: It's free! It's simple! It's (somewhat) intuitive! It has great documentation! It can be used even if you have LITERALLY no programming experience! You can make everything in it, from text to sprites to code! Those games sure are small! ✨Cons: Those games sure are small. This is to make THE simplest game. Barely any animation for your sprites, can barely fit a line of text in there. But honestly, the restrictions are refreshing! Some games to look at: honestly I haven't played that many bitsy games because i am a fake gamer. The picture above is from Under A Star Called Sun though and that looks so pretty

RPGMaker: To make RPGs! LIKE ME!!!!! NOTE: I recommend getting the latest version if you can, but all have their pros and cons. You can get a better idea by looking at this post. ✨Pros: Literally everything you need to make an RPG. Has a tutorial inside the software itself that will teach you the basics. Pretty simple to understand, even if you have no coding experience! Also I made a post helping you out with RPGMaker right here! ✨Cons: Some stuff can be hard to figure out. Also, the latest version is expensive. Get it on sale! Some games to look at: Yume Nikki, Hylics, In Stars and Time (hehe. I made it)

engine.lol: collage worlds! it is relatively new so I don't know much about it, but it seems fascinating. picture is from Garden! NOTE: There's a bunch of smaller engines to find out there. Just yesterday I found out there's an Idle Game Maker made by the Cookie Clicker creator. Isn't life wonderful?

✨more advice under the cut. this is Long ok✨

ENGINES I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT AND THEY SEEM HARD BUT ALSO GIVE IT A TRY I GUESS!!!! :

Unity and Unreal: I don't know anything about those! That looks hard to learn! But indie devs use them! It seems expensive! Follow your dreams though! Don't ask me how!

GameMaker: Wuh I just don't know anything about it either! I just know it's now free if your game is non-commercial (aka, you're not selling it), and Undertale was made on it! It seems good! You probably need some coding experience though!!!

Godot: Man I know even less about this one. Heard good things though!

BUNCHA RANDOM ADVICE!!!!

-Make something small first! Try making simple: a character is in a room, and exits the room. The character can look around, decide to take an item with them, can leave, and maybe the door is locked and you have to find the key. Figuring out how to code something like that, whether it is as a fully text-based game or as an RPGMaker map, should be a good start to figure out how your software of choice works!

-After that, if you have an idea, try first to make the simplest version of that idea. For my timeloop RPG, my simplest version was two rooms: first room you can walk in, second room with the King, where a cutscene automatically plays and the battle starts, you immediately die, and loop back to the first room, with the text from this point on reflecting this change. I think I also added a loop counter. This helped me figure out the most important thing: Can This Game Be Made? After that, the rest is just fun stuff. So if you want to make a dating sim, try and figure out how to add choices, and how to have affection points go up and down depending on your choices! If you want to make a platformer, figure out how to make your character move and jump and how to create a simple level! If you just want to make a kinetic visual novel with no choices, figure out how to add text, and how to add portraits! You'll be surprised at how powerful you'll feel after having figured even those simple things out.

-If you have a programming problem or just get confused, never underestimate the power of asking Google! You most likely won't be the only person asking this question, and you will learn some useful tips! If you are powerful enough, you can even… Ask people??? On forums??? Not me though.

-Yeah I know you probably want to make Your Big Idea RIGHT NOW but please. Make a smaller prototype first. You need to get that experience. Trust me.

-If you are not a womanthing of many skills like me, you might realize you need help. Maybe you need an artist, or a programmer. So! Game jams on itch.io are a great way to get to work and meet other game devs that have different strengths! Or ask around! Maybe your artist friend secretly always wanted to draw for a game. Ask! Collaborate! Have fun!!!

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

#reference #gamedev #indie dev #game dev #tutorial #video game #ACTUAL GAME DEVS DO NOT INTERACT!!!1!!!!! #this is for people who are afraid of coding. do not come at me and say 'actually godot is easy if you just--' I JUST WILL NOT. #long post

[felinalain]

Unity thinks it can "appease enough to make it work"

TL!DR:

Among Us Dev got a phone call with Unity execs. They said they would do deals with specific devs, to mitigate the fee and the backlash but they would not cancel their decision.

He added that the execs seems to think if they can wait long enough, and if few enough have to pay, all devs will drop the matter and not care about those that are still affected. (because solidarity is not a concept that those money-hungry fucks understand)

Among Us Dev then said he was going to start looking into other engine options.

#unity #they're trying to do what hollywood is doing to the strike #that's really it #they want to wait it out #and they think they'll win #I'm actually worried now

[vexwerewolf]

The thing is, D&D is not a game.

I know that sounds insane, but hear me out: D&D is not a game, it is a games console. You don't actually "play D&D." You play "Dragon Heist" or "Tomb of Annihilation" or "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" or "your GM's homebrew campaign" or "the plot of Critical Role Season 1 reconstructed from memory" on D&D.

For quite a long while now - possibly literal decades - D&D hasn't even been the best games console, but it's been "the one everyone knows about" and "the one my friends have" and in fact it's "the one whose name is almost synonymous with the entire medium of TTRPGs," like how "Nintendo" or "Playstation" could just mean "games console" to people who didn't understand games consoles. They might not have heard of a "tabletop roleplaying game," but most people have heard of "Dungeons & Dragons."

For this extended metaphor, D&D is Nintendo back in the 90s, or Playstation in the 2000s. Sometimes you say "oh let's go to my house and play Nintendo" or "c'mon dude I wanna play Playstation" but you're not actually playing Nintendo or Playstation, you're playing Resident Evil or Super Mario Bros or Jurassic Park or Metal Gear Solid or whatever on a Nintendo or a Playstation.

Now, this metaphor is going to get even more tortured, but remember how when the PS2 and the original X-Box came out, they used a standardised DVD format, but the Nintendo console in that generation, the Gamecube, used discs but they were this proprietary tiny little disc format that they had control over? That essentially meant that it was really difficult to make third party titles for the Gamecube that did literally anything that Nintendo didn't want them to do, and also essentially gave Nintendo an even greater ability to skim money off the top of any sales?

So that must've seemed like a smart business decision in their heads. But the PS2 and the X-Box used DVDs. This was a standardized format which gave Microsoft and Sony way less control over who made games for their consoles, but that actually turned out to be a good thing for gaming, because it meant that the breadth of games that you could play on their consoles was massively increased even if some of them were games Microsoft and Sony didn't really approve of. (Also it's worth nothing that the PS2 and the X-Box could just play DVDs, which meant if your household was on a budget, you didn't need a separate DVD player - your games console could do it for you! This was actually a huge selling point!)

What Wizards are currently trying to do now is kinda-sorta the equivalent of Sony suddenly announcing that the PS5 will only accept a proprietary cartridge format they hold the patent on, will control the content of and charge money for the construction of. This possibly seems like it could be a moneymaker in your head because you hold market dominance (apparently the PS5 has 30 million units shipped compared to X-Box Series X 20 million units) and so many people make games for your console, but what it actually means is game devs and publishers will abandon your product. If it takes so much more work, the scope of what they're allowed to do is so much more limited and they're going to make less money off of it, they just won't bother. They'll go make games for the X-Box or PC instead.

To use another computer metaphor, D&D is Windows - it might not be the best system but it's the system most people are familiar with and so it gets the most stuff made for it, but there's is an upper limit on the bullshit people will take before they decide fuck it and get an Apple or learn how Linux works.

TTRPG systems are a weird product because you're not selling people a game, you're selling people a method to play a game. All the actual games are created by the community - even prewritten campaigns needs to be executed via a game master. Trying to skim money off the community will mean they'll eventually give up on you.

#open gaming license #dungeons and dragons #ogl #ogl 1.1 #opendnd #wizards of the coast #one dnd #d&d #dnd #tabletop gaming #tabletop roleplaying games #ttrpgs

[creeperthescamp]

i think one of the least used concepts in elder scrolls lore is its nebulous relationship to truth.

like something i do actually appreciate about that cunt kirkbride's writing in morrowind is that the mythology of the tribunal is allowed to be relatively ambiguous and there's room for poetry and fable and unreliable narrators. there's a strong general tendency in both fandom and dev to interpret lore quite literally and treat every text as reliable sources of fact about tamriel even when the text is like. fiction or written with a clear bias towards certain factions or prejudices.

the main example I'm thinking of is the 'notes on racial phylogeny' lore book. it's literally just racist pseudoscience and in a real life context would be considered unreliable and deeply offensive. but in tes, i rarely see anyone stop to actually consider that perhaps this lore isn't really a factual study of how bodies work but about how the imperial empire categorises the people it colonises and justifies it's supremacy. there's so much focus on determining the rules and metaphysical aspects of the world that there's no consideration that the way factions like the empire see the world is inherently flawed.

it's fun to think of a world where stars are literal holes punched in the fabric of the sky, or that water is made of memory, but i also think it would be a much more fun and flexible world if these theories are considered to be just a few of many lenses that people in tamriel use to try to understand their world. some of my favourite pieces of lore and world building are things like 'cherims heart of anequina' that imply a rich world of culture and art; i love the idea that tamriel has art and art critics and people who discuss ideas for other purposes than trying to figure out what's The Only True Lore.

#martin posts #tes #morrowind #the elder scrolls #ugh i do not feel that confident in my ability to analyse and write essays on stuff but i like to try anyway #when i started googling stuff i just got more confused and frustrated. these games must be very hard to write a wiki about #i would someday like to put these ideas into better words and gather more evidence. but writing it here is a start i guess

[devsgames]

Okay at this point I've seen so many students feeling doomed for taking a course where a teacher uses Unity or like they're wasting time learning the engine, and while understandably the situation at Unity sucks and is stressful for everyone: y'all need to stop thinking learning Unity a waste of your time.

Learning a game engine does not dictate your abilities as a dev, and the skills you learn in almost any engine are almost all transferrable skills when moving to other engines. Almost every new job you get in the games industry will use new tools, engines and systems no matter where you work, whether that be proprietary, enterprise or open-source. Skills you learn in any engine are going to be relevant even if the software is not - especially if you're learning development for the first time. Hell, even the act of learning a game engine is a transferrable skill.

It's sort of like saying it's a waste to learn Blender because people use 3DS Max, or why bother learning how to use a Mac when many people use Windows; it's all the same principals applied differently. The knowledge is still fundamental and applicable across tools.

Many engines use C-adjacent languages. Many engines use similar IDE interfaces. Many engines use Object Oriented Programming. Many engines have component-based architecture. Many objects handle data and modular prefabs and inheritence in a similar way. You are going to be learning skills that are applicable everywhere, and hiring managers worth their weight will be well aware of this.

The first digital game I made was made in Flash in 2009. I'm still using some principles I learned then. I used Unity for almost a decade and am now learning Godot and finding many similarities between the two. If my skills and knowledge are somehow still relevant then trust me: you are going to learn a lot of useful skills using Unity.

#unity #gamedev #game development #indie games #indie game #game dev #gamedevelopment #indiegames #indie dev #godot #unreal #unreal engine #godot engine